Over the summer, I asked you all whether we are finally headed toward a cashless society. Since then the battle for the digital wallet has certainly heated up. Well today, I am thrilled to announce the newest addition to Forrester's Consumer Product Strategy practice. Her name is Denée Carrington, and she will be joining us as a Senior Analyst, covering consumer payments, starting January 3, 2012.

To provide more specifics, here's a sneak peek at some of the coverage areas where Denée will be able to help Forrester clients with consumer payment strategy in the new year:

As the world starts discussing the intricacies of the Mayan calendar, Nostradamus’ predictions and the potential appearance of “Planet X” in 2012, we thought we would get the conversation focused on something much more important … the future of Market Insights. No, there’s no doomsday planned for our profession but, yes, there may be some cataclysmic events for some market insights professionals as they get hit by increasing demands from executives and stakeholders who are struggling to keep up with competitive disruption and fast-changing customer preferences.

Forrester will shortly publish the “Predictions 2012: What Will Happen In Market Research” report. In it, we’ll detail major tectonic shifts which we’ve been monitoring in the industry and why we are reaching a tipping point where constancy is now riskier than change. Some factors contributing to this include:

Companies need to change.Disruptors are changing the rules of the game with their “shoot-aim-ready!” business model and the internet has greatly enhanced customer power, influence and choice. To survive in this environment, companies need to embrace continuous market and performance monitoring and business improvement.

Market insights needs to change. Changes at the company level will force market insights departments to change their deliverables and business processes. Key changes include providing more agile insights, deeper and more strategic insights and more proactive competitive intelligence. Those which don’t face being replaced by Shadow MI.

By now, you’ve likely read a whole host of stories about Google’s reported play at competing with Amazon’s Prime "one-day shipping" program. The crux of it? The internet giant is planning to leverage its local search product to offer consumers a same-day shipping option if they purchase from a participating retailer.

There are plenty of challenges to this business model, many of which are covered here and here--logistics, data sharing, and cost structure are just three key issues that Google would need to tackle head-on to make such a program viable. Nonetheless, it got me thinking... there’s an aspect of this proposed plan that is awfully intriguing from a Personal Identity Management (PIDM) perspective.

In order to facilitate delivery, Google would have to capture transaction data at the product level.

This would let consumers maintain "anytime-anywhere" access to their purchase history. Imagine never again rooting around for a receipt to return an item, or trying to remember which size bags your vacuum cleaner takes.

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Does your firm have an online testing program? If so, we want to hear from you!

Today we are launching the 2011 edition of Forrester's Online Testing User Survey. Our goal with this survey is to collect data that will help further our understanding of online testing trends and identify best practices. Last year we ran the survey alongside the Online Testing Wave report and published the findings in The State of Online Testing 2010. This year we're fielding an expanded survey to address a wide array of factors involved in managing an online testing program, from benefits, goals, and challenges to budgeting, staffing, experiments, and suppliers. This is valuable information that will help firms benchmark themselves against the rest of the market and discover opportunities to enhance their online testing efforts.